Here’s my latest Insurance Journal story to become available online: “Insurers question NAIC budget reserves.”

The NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) is an interesting organization. It’s a private, quasi-governmental organization that charges a fee in the thousands to file their annual statement, which is required by every state insurance department.

Then it charges anybody who wants to get that data back out of the system additional, exorbitant fees. Nice gig if you can get it. And when they take in too much money in fees they say they need it for reserves. And the insurers complain. But the difference is now that the industry’s starting to think, as sources have told me, they’d rather deal with one gorilla (the feds) than 50 monkeys.

I doubt the trade would work out very well, but they’re using that threat as leverage to get the state regulators to be more friendly, since federal regulation would remove a $12 billion annual stream of income the states get from taxing insurance premiums.

And the beat goes on.